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Thursday, October 18, 2007

SUPERBUGS? WHY AND HOW TO COMBAT THEM

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a type of bacteria that is resistant to certain antibiotics. These antibiotics include methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin.

In Virginia an entire school has closed down due to a MRSA outbreak there.They follow up with these admonitions:

(1)

1-Keep hands clean by washing thoroughly with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. 2-Keep cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage until healed. 3-Avoid contact with other people's wounds or bandages. 4-Avoid sharing personal items such as towels or razors.

(2)

But while rates of hospital-acquired MRSA infections have been relatively stable in recent years, community acquired infections have been rising steadily in the state and across the country.Connecticut reported 952 cases of MRSA infections in 2005, but Hadler said the actual number could be much higher because many cases are not particularly serious.In fact, MRSA infections are so common in the community now that most doctors who see such infections don't bother treating patients with the class of antibiotics that include methicillin, said Dr. Kevin Dieckhaus, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Connecticut Health Center.The bacteria often spread through contact with pus-filled boils. In schools, athletes are often susceptible to infection....Simple hygiene, such as washing hands, can help stop the spread of the infection.

I don't believe this is new, I remember my brother got this antibiotic resistant Staph infection way back in the early 1960's.

How did this happen? Where did it come from?(3)

When penicillin became widely available during the second world war, it was a medical miracle, rapidly vanquishing the biggest wartime killer--infected wounds. Discovered initially by a French medical student, Ernest Duchesne, in 1896, and then rediscovered by Scottish physician Alexander Fleming in 1928, the product of the soil mold Penicillium crippled many types of disease-causing bacteria. But just four years after drug companies began mass-producing penicillin in 1943, microbes began appearing that could resist it. The first bug to battle penicillin was Staphylococcus aureus. This bacterium is often a harmless passenger in the human body, but it can cause illness, such as pneumonia or toxic shock syndrome, when it overgrows or produces a toxin. In 1967, another type of penicillin-resistant pneumonia, caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and called pneumococcus, surfaced in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. At about the same time, American military personnel in southeast Asia were acquiring penicillin-resistant gonorrhea from prostitutes. By 1976, when the soldiers had come home, they brought the new strain of gonorrhea with them, and physicians had to find new drugs to treat it. In 1983, a hospital-acquired intestinal infection caused by the bacterium Enterococcus faecium joined the list of bugs that outwit penicillin. Antibiotic resistance spreads fast. Between 1979 and 1987, for example, only 0.02 percent of pneumococcus strains infecting a large number of patients surveyed by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were penicillin-resistant. CDC's survey included 13 hospitals in 12 states. Today, 6.6 percent of pneumococcus strains are resistant, according to a report in the June 15, 1994, Journal of the American Medical Association by Robert F. Breiman, M.D., and colleagues at CDC. The agency also reports that in 1992, 13,300 hospital patients died of bacterial infections that were resistant to antibiotic treatment.

People get a prescription for antibiotics; take a day's worth or so, then store the rest for who knows what, but the bugs would just be weakened by the shortened dose. Then they would lie dormant in the now healthier body awaiting the next time that body or another it comes in contact with to be weakened enough to manifest it's evil intent. The first person then gives that prescription to the second one who feels under the weather and those germs are flushed but still alive because this time the antibiotic is not fresh nor is it a full dose. And so on and so on. The bacteria thus treated becomes stronger and more able to withstand the antibiotics normally given against it. Pretty soon people who get sick are unable to get well, But increasingly I read there is other factors at work here.

Our society has a fixation to be squeaky clean, dirt is to be avoided and scrubbed off with abrasive and chemical soaps.

A bit of "dirt" can be beneficial for health but the beneficial ones are killed off by the constant use of antibiotics. One such friendly bacteria in our intestines helps to digest our foods properly and without them another takes it's place; a not-at-all-friendly flora called Candida Albacans, which causes a condition called Candidiasis. I'm just mentioning this as an aside it's one example there are more. This article is about MRSA.

I've read recently that we are way too quick to hold up hygiene as a holy endeavor, the human body is weakened by it's inability to ward off unfamiliar germs because it hasn't encountered them when it was healthier and hasn't given it's own abilities as infection fighting a chance to create natural immunities. Think about it, the very reason we have t-cells for instance is to kill off any and all opportunistic infectious agents, but first they must encounter them and create an immunity in the body. It's much more efficacious if this is done in a healthy body when the encounter with the infection is minor. Then later when the body is sickly that particular infection can be better tackled by the immunity already there.

I personally do not use soaps, there is way too much in them I do not want soaking into my skin, and many are helpfully antibiotic also, and I don't need that at all. I have read that just rubbing your hands under running water removes most germs, then if I really need it I'll rinse with Hydrogen Peroxide, but usually not, since I'm healthier now I want to develop an ability to ward off infection more naturally. since I quit using soaps I've noticed that my chronically dry hands are normal now. I quit using soaps on my face in my early 30's and people always comment on how young I look. A wetter climate always helps as well. I've already done one blog entry on the dangers to skin with soap on delicate skin:skin care

As to keeping myself from getting sick I use the safe natural infection fighters inCellPower™ It has bacterial,viral, and fungal killers that won't mess with our natural flora, and also I'm using:FLAX SEED OIL for my colon, but of course FLAX SEED OIL is also a great source of omega-3 essential fatty acids. And one each of the four essential minerals each day:~SELENIUMhelps immune system,fights infection and aids circulation~MAGNESIUMhelps to relax you, aids stress and muscle relaxing~CHROMIUMimproves insulin sensitivity, and helps lower blood sugar.~ZINC every day.

~~~~Jokes And inspirations~~~~There are two kinds of people, those who finishwhat they start and so on.-- Robert Byrne

Addresses are given to us to conceal ourwhereabouts.-- Saki

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out thetrees, then names the streets after them.-- Bill Vaughan~~~When a woman requested a whole roaster at the market where I work, the butcher didn't let on that the bird he presented her was the last one. "Do you have one that's a little larger?" she asked.

"Of course," said the butcher. He took the roaster behind the counter, away from view, and made a lot of noise rolling it around the ice as if he were searching for just the right chicken. He then showed the same bird to her.

"Better," she said. "Do you have one with a little more meat on it?"

He took the chicken, rolled it in the ice and offered it up a third time.

"Great," the woman said. "I'll take all three."

~~~All my husband wanted was to pay for some batteries, but none of the clerks in the electronics store seemed interested in helping him. "I've got an idea," I said, and pulled a tape measure out of my purse. I stepped over to one of the giant plasma-screen TVs and started to measure it.

Faster than you can say high definition, a young man came running over. "May I help you?" he asked breathlessly.

"Yes," I said. "I'd like to buy these batteries."

~~~It is so rare to be offered a meal on airlines these days that I was surprised to hear the flight attendant ask the man sitting in front of me, "Would you like dinner?"

"What are my choices?" he responded.

"Yes or no," she said.

~~~Lisa, my co-worker at the bus company, needed to send a letter of apology to a customer whose trip was a complete fiasco from start to finish. I reminded her of a similar situation a year earlier, and dug out the letter I'd written then. "All you have to do," I told her, "is change the details, the date and the name."

She looked it over and smiled wryly. "We don't need to change the name." ~~~A little boy was doing a test in his math class. The question was a complicated one, but not for this little genius! The question was: "You live in South Carolina. You have to pay about $60 per month to be able to warm your house. A year later, the cost of warming your house is 6 times as much as it used to cost. What should you do to get out of this conflict?"

The little boy's answer:

You move.

~~~

Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out?"

Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?

Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?

Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?

If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?

Why does your OB-GYN leave the room when you get undressed

Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They are both dogs.

Wile E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that Acme stuff, why didn't he just buy dinner?

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?

Isn't Disney World just a people trap operated by a mouse?

Why do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?

Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he can't wait to stick his head out the window into the wind?

Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

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